Month: June 2015

Surveying auroral emissions is a bit like looking at a giant television screen; the picture can help scientists figure out what is happening with energetic particles, and electromagnetic fields, from just above the Earth to far out in surrounding space. et’s talk about the space around our planet and some types of aurora.

On Monday, June 22, 2015 a number of coronal mass ejection (CME) events impacted Earth and, our plots of solar wind power showed a very high likelihood for strong aurora activity on Monday evening and Tuesday morning– and citizen scientists caught all the action!

On Friday, two separate CME events were detected and projected to reach the Earth at some point later in the weekend. Be on the lookout tonight for a possibility of strong aurora activity Monday evening/Tuesday morning (June 22nd and 23rd)!

Radio astronomers are gearing up for a new generation of radio telescopes that will be based on radically new design concepts: a wide field of view and a high-fidelity snapshot capability. One such instrument is the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a radio telescope in the Australian outback. If such an instrument were to be built at high latitudes, it could provide a radio telescope’s view of auroral activity that could be used to forge a better understanding of what happens to plasma near the Earth during an auroral display.